Firm Heterogeneity and the Labour Market Effects of Trade Liberalisation

Abstract How does enforcement of labour regulations shape the labour market effects of trade? We combine local economic shocks generated by the unilateral trade liberalisation in Brazil and enforcement variation across regions to show that regions with stricter enforcement observed: (i) lower informality; (ii) larger losses in overall employment; (iii) greater reductions in the number of formal plants. Regions with weaker enforcement experienced opposite effects. All these effects are concentrated on low-skill workers. Our results indicate that greater flexibility introduced by informality allows both formal firms and low-skill workers to cope better with adverse labour market shocks.

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Simulating the long-term labour market effects of an industrial investment. A microsimulation approach

Erdkunde ◽

10.3112/erdkunde.1999.02.05 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 53 (2) ◽

pp. 150-162 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Urban Lindgren

Keyword(s):

Labour Market ◽

Market Effects ◽

Term Labour ◽

Industrial Investment

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COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: Implications for workers and unions

Journal of Industrial Relations ◽

10.1177/00221856211000097 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 002218562110000

Author(s):

Michele Ford ◽

Kristy Ward

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Southeast Asia ◽

Labour Market ◽

Industrial Relations ◽

First Year ◽

Labour Relations ◽

The Public ◽

Market Effects ◽

Export Orientation ◽

Health Measures

The labour market effects in Southeast Asia of the COVID-19 pandemic have attracted considerable analysis from both scholars and practitioners. However, much less attention has been paid to the pandemic’s impact on legal protections for workers’ and unions’ rights, or to what might account for divergent outcomes in this respect in economies that share many characteristics, including a strong export orientation in labour-intensive industries and weak industrial relations institutions. Having described the public health measures taken to control the spread of COVID-19 in Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam, this article analyses governments’ employment-related responses and their impact on workers and unions in the first year of the pandemic. Based on this analysis, we conclude that the disruption caused to these countries’ economies, and societies, served to reproduce existing patterns of state–labour relations rather than overturning them.

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From work sharing to temporal flexibility : working time policy in Belgium 1975-1990

Res Publica ◽

10.21825/rp.v34i1.20342 ◽

1970 ◽

Vol 34 (1) ◽

pp. 35-51

Author(s):

Jens Bastian

Keyword(s):

Economic System ◽

Labour Market ◽

Working Hours ◽

Structural Features ◽

Working Time ◽

Market Effects ◽

Work Sharing ◽

Temporal Flexibility

The article focuses on working time policies introduced in Belgium during the period 1975-1990. As a country with early mass-unemployment, the magnitude of the unfolding Labour market problems fostered a specific set of responsive strategies. The initial trajectory of Belgian working time policies was centered around cutting standard weekly working hours in order to enhance Labour market effects. In the course of a marked issue transformation, work sharing objectives were substituted by the notion of temporal flexibility which focused primarily on concerns for and changes in the economie performance of individual firms. The author outlines various structural features of the Belgian socio-economic system and argues that these profoundly affected the goals identified with working time policies as much as the actor constellations endorsing the respective measures.

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